Is there anything ARM-specific in this setup that you require? Low power? Low cost? Power draw and costs of A15 will probably be comparable to desktop Atom or Brazos, and less relevant if you actually plan to use a few peripherals. A15 does perform better than current-gen Atom or Brazos. But a used Core2 Duo will beat all of them in everything except power draw. So unless you require something ARM specific (like binary compatibility), I really don't see the why you'd want such a board.

Sounds like WHM wants really low cost judging by his desire for a full-featured board with chip and MB to be $100. Of course as mentioned there's already sub-$100 boards out there for Atom. That linked board has no RAM in it but 4 GB of RAM could be added for $20.

My proposed use case for a full-sized ARM motherboard would have been a home Linux server of some sort that needs very little computing power and would benefit from the low-power requirements of ARM.

One of the reasons the Raspberry Pi is appealing is not just because it's cheap, but also because it's small and requires almost no space. Its port layout is a little annoying (would have been nice if all of the cords came out the same side and the SD card didn't jut out) but it wasn't made to be a production computer.

The issue of course is that a full-size ARM board, other than being good for Chromebooks, would negate a lot of the convenient small-ness of the Pi.

I wouldn't be surprised if D-sub VGA outlives DVI (which will probably be subsumed by HDMI and Displayport).

And yet most video cards don't come with a VGA port...

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Btw, I'm still curious about your intended applications.

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Sounds like WHM wants really low cost judging by his desire for a full-featured board with chip and MB to be $100. Of course as mentioned there's already sub-$100 boards out there for Atom. That linked board has no RAM in it but 4 GB of RAM could be added for $20.

I don't know about full-featured, but is it too much to ask for a DVI-I port instead of VGA?

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The issue of course is that a full-size ARM board, other than being good for Chromebooks, would negate a lot of the convenient small-ness of the Pi.

Well I'm not proposing a full size ATX board but a MicoATX or ITX form factor.

Also, the Mini-ITX form factor is still a lot larger than a Pi, so the "small and cute and cheap" appeal of the Pi doesn't necessarily extend even to mini-ITX. I somehow think that if the Raspberry Pi was $35 but was mini-ITX sized, it would not be nearly in as much demand as it is now. Size means a lot!

Sounds like WHM wants really low cost judging by his desire for a full-featured board with chip and MB to be $100. Of course as mentioned there's already sub-$100 boards out there for Atom. That linked board has no RAM in it but 4 GB of RAM could be added for $20.

I don't know about full-featured, but is it too much to ask for a DVI-I port instead of VGA?

Actually, yes. OEMs would have to add some type of DisplayPort converter, among other switches, to implement a DVI-I, DVI-D or HDMI port, which would take a considerable amount of space on an already small form-factor.

I somehow think that if the Raspberry Pi was $35 but was mini-ITX sized, it would not be nearly in as much demand as it is now. Size means a lot!

This would be "deluxe" version of the Pi with more memory, ports, and etc.

Again, what's the goal here? It's been demonstrated several times in-thread now that $80 mini-ITX parts on Intel Atom and AMD C-60 (Brazos APU) parts do everything you're asking about... so is this all for the sake of argument or is there some goal we're not seeing here?

Raspberry Pi is truly tiny and cheap, which are much of its main appeals. Low-power also helps.

To add the things you've talked about quickly starts to detract from much of Raspberry Pi's main appeals-- a PCI-e slot (even in Expresscard or mini-PCI-e card) takes more space, permits greater power consumption, raises the cost-- especially when existing competition is plentiful at the $80 mark... or am I thinking too narrowly here?

Is there some killer app (be it purely software, or both software/hardware) concept out there?

Actually, yes. OEMs would have to add some type of DisplayPort converter, among other switches, to implement a DVI-I, DVI-D or HDMI port, which would take a considerable amount of space on an already small form-factor.

Again, what's the goal here? It's been demonstrated several times in-thread now that $80 mini-ITX parts on Intel Atom and AMD C-60 (Brazos APU) parts do everything you're asking about... so is this all for the sake of argument or is there some goal we're not seeing here?

Yeah, Ok, you are right, there isn't any point to doing this for most of us.

so is this all for the sake of argument or is there some goal we're not seeing here?

From the hip (not researched at all), but I wouldn't mind a little ARM Linux machine to finally get into GP32 game dev (digging in to RISC assembler, C, etc) just for the shits and giggles. Whatever happened to the "because I can" mentality? (and, for the record, the chances of me actually doing any of that: zero.)

so is this all for the sake of argument or is there some goal we're not seeing here?

From the hip (not researched at all), but I wouldn't mind a little ARM Linux machine to finally get into GP32 game dev (digging in to RISC assembler, C, etc) just for the shits and giggles. Whatever happened to the "because I can" mentality? (and, for the record, the chances of me actually doing any of that: zero.)

Thats why I bought my pi. Having a full linux system on a real device is a lot easier for doing assembly programming then using an emulator.

Damn. Even at a piddling 800mhz, it's a win for Sandy Bridge vs. ARM15. Only a slight lead in some areas, but still, it's a win all around performance-wise. Both meet advertised specs as far as battery life goes, but I can't find any info on battery capacity, so I don't what that means (and the SNB has a much lower rated battery life, 4 hours vs. 6.5 hours for the A15).

Given that an "ARM based motherboard" as this thread is discussing isn't too worried about power consumption, I'd say, yeah, not much use for it-- at least not at a higher price-point. At the substantially lower $35 price point for Raspberry Pi tho, I can see that ARM does have a place.

Damn. Even at a piddling 800mhz, it's a win for Sandy Bridge vs. ARM15. Only a slight lead in some areas, but still, it's a win all around performance-wise. Both meet advertised specs as far as battery life goes, but I can't find any info on battery capacity, so I don't what that means (and the SNB has a much lower rated battery life, 4 hours vs. 6.5 hours for the A15).

Would also like to know why this CPU would be permanently clocked at 800MHz. I have a feeling that was just what it was sitting at when the clock speed was measured. In fact, Acer themselves claims the model operates at 1.1GHz (http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/mod ... .SH7AA.004) so I call bullshit.

Hmm, that would be interesting. I wonder if the Anandtech article comments say anything about the clock speed-- I'm not seeing anything...

At 1.1ghz the performance disparity is a little less crazy-- still important-- but way less crazy.

Given Intel's possible processor clock speed targets (as discussed here), seeing a permanent 800mhz clock would be possible, but given it's advertised at 1.1ghz that would definitely not be what I expect...